September 1, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



287 



that has been more than made np by the keen- 

 ness of the members to see all that can be seen 

 of the country, and to profit by a closer ac- 

 quaintance with its problems, which is essen- 

 tial to the proper understanding of them in 

 England. South Africa, while paying a trib- 

 ute to the high standard of the papers read, 

 will endorse whole-heartedly the policy adopted 

 by the members. 



The Committee of the British Association 

 on Zoology Organization has reported that a 

 register of zoologists has been established, and 

 that fifty-seven zoologists have accepted the in- 

 vitation of the committee to place their names 

 upon the register. The committee has ob- 

 tained by correspondence the opinion of a . 

 large number of the zoologists of the country 

 upon the question of the importance of the 

 grant applied for by the committee of Section 

 D to enable a committee to send a competent 

 investigator to the Zoological Station in 

 Naples. Other matters affecting the interests 

 of zoologists in the country have engaged the 

 attention of the committee during the year. 

 A meeting of the committee was held in Lon- 

 don on May 11. A meeting of zoologists sum- 

 moned by the committee to consider the ques- 

 tion of the teaching of natural history in 

 schools was held in the Zoological Gardens, 

 London, on the same date. 



At the last monthly meeting of the Zoolog- 

 ical Society of London it was stated that the 

 additions to the society's menagerie during 

 that month had amounted to 274, amongst 

 which special attention was called to a leopard 

 (Felix pardus), from near Hong-kong, pre- 

 sented by Mr. J. A. Bullin; to the three Cali- 

 fornian sea lions (Otaria gillespii), from 

 Santa Barbara, purchased; to a white-tailed 

 gnu (Connochcetes gnu), born in the men- 

 agerie ; and to a male Somali ostrich (Siruthio 

 molyhdophanes) , purchased. 



It is expected that within a year wireless 

 telegraph communication will be established 

 between New Zealand and Australia. 



The Journal of the American Medical Asso- 

 ciation states that, at the request of the med- 

 ical directors of the City Hospital, the board of 

 public service adopted a resolution that here- 

 after the professor of pathology of the Cin- 



cinnati University shall be the head of the 

 pathologic department of the hospital. The 

 directors stated that they had been made con- 

 vinced of the fact that a professorship of pa- 

 thology would soon be added to the university 

 staff. 



The Sanitary Lispectors' Association met 

 in London on August 18. In the course of 

 his presidential address, as reported in the 

 London Times, Sir J. Crichton-Browne dealt 

 with the housing problem, and pointed out 

 the advantages from a health point of view 

 of country life as compared with town life. 

 That the townsman was shorter-lived than the 

 countryman was, he said, incontrovertible. 

 Professor Karl Pearson, a thoughtful and 

 cautious anthropologist, had told us that 

 decadence of character and of intelligent 

 leadership was to be noted alike in the British 

 merchant; the professional man and the work- 

 man, and this he attributed to the fact that 

 the intellectual classes were not reproducing 

 their numbers as they did 50 or 100 years ago. 

 In this view Professor Pearson was supported 

 by the prime minister, who said at Cambridge 

 last year that in the case of every man who 

 left the laboring class and became a member 

 of the middle or wealthier classes his progeny 

 were likely to be diminished owing to the fact 

 that marriages were later in that class. He 

 was inclined to think, however, that intel- 

 lectual decadence, if it be upon us, was not 

 altogether due to the causes assigned by Pro- 

 fessor Pearson and Mr. Balfour, and was not 

 necessarily destined to deepen as time went 

 on. In a people like our own there was always 

 outside the actually intellectual class a still 

 larger class potentially intellectual with abili- 

 ties incompletely evolved, because never called 

 forth, but capable under stress of circum- 

 stances of the higher development. Many of 

 our finest intellects had sprung from the un- 

 intellectual class, and genius was generally 

 more or less of a sport. His own view was 

 that any dearth of ability from which we 

 might be suffering was to be ascribed not so 

 much to the infertility of the cultivated classes 

 as to the artificial production of stupidity in 

 various ways, and to the incessant drainage 

 from the country — which was the fit and 



